Article pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
The Journal of Kitchen Chemistry: A Tool for Instructing the Preparation of a Chemistry Journal Article Jonathan K. Meyers, Tyler W. LeBaron, and David C. Collins* Chemistry Department, Brigham Young UniversityIdaho, Rexburg, Idaho 83460, United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: Writing assignments are typically incorporated into chemistry courses in an attempt to enhance the learning of chemistry or to teach technical writing to chemistry majors. This work addresses the development of chemistry-major writing skills by focusing on the rigorous guidelines and conventions associated with the preparation of a journal article. In an attempt to reproduce the entire process associated with the writing of a peer-reviewed journal article (i.e., designing an experiment, collecting data, modifying an experiment, evaluating and interpreting data, and communicating results) kitchen chemistry projects were employed. These projects facilitated the development of student work ownership and better simulated a journal-article writing experience in comparison to laboratory reports and other conventional options. Student written work was submitted to the in-house journal The Journal of Kitchen Chemistry for publication. Students responded favorably to the course structure and the kitchen chemistry project concept. Complete course structure, kitchen chemistry project guidelines, journal-article requirements, and survey results are presented. KEYWORDS: Upper-Division Undergraduate, Curriculum, Communication/Writing, Internet/Web-Based Learning
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INTRODUCTION
implemented a discipline-specific writing course taught by chemistry faculty into their degree requirements.7−11 The writing of a journal-article-equivalent report (i.e., abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion) from a conventional laboratory experiment, where all students perform the same-guided procedures, is potentially very different from writing a journal article for an original research project. Students are inclined to treat the instructor as their audience and leave out pertinent details already known by the instructor (e.g., experimental conditions).7 Experience supports this idea as students regularly ask the instructor for required report specifics, and the originality and creativity of a wellwritten journal article are suppressed. These tendencies may be due to the repetitive nature of the experiments; they may also be due to the student presuming the instructor (and not the student) owns the experiment. After all, the entire experiment is customarily given to the student with guided procedures instead of being created by the student. It is implicitly (or sometimes explicitly) understood that the instructor expects particular experimental results. The writing experience could become more enjoyable and better represent the entire process associated with the preparation of a journal article if the student had complete ownership of the project, data, and prose. If not a laboratory experiment, then about what does the student write? In the past, many approaches have been suggested and tried. Students may perform an exhaustive search of the literature and write a review paper,8 but this will not necessarily prepare the student to communicate their own work. Some universities have a significant number of chemistry
Articles from this Journal and others have addressed the importance of developing the technical writing skills of chemistry majors. Nonscience majors in chemistry courses are often encouraged to write complete laboratory reports or include written reflections in their reports to promote active learning, improve reasoning skills, and enhance learning.1−3 Chemistry majors, however, may take laboratory courses embedded with writing assignments to teach technical writing, peer reviewing, and critical reading.4,5 The purpose of this work is to address the development of the chemistry major’s technical and chemistry writing skills specifically in reference to the preparation of a journal article. Although advancing the technical writing skills of a chemistry major with education and practice is essential for preparing chemistry majors to communicate effectively their work with others throughout their careers, the learning of traditional technical writing skills (e.g., being concise, clear, complete, and meticulous) by simply enrolling in an English-department technical writing course may not be enough. There are many chemistry-specific writing conventions6 not explicitly taught in traditional technical writing courses nor in chemistry laboratory courses. These conventions must also be learned to allow the chemistry major to communicate effectively with others in chemistry. Embedding writing assignments into laboratory courses, although worthwhile, may not be sufficient to educate the chemistry major. This may be due to traditional chemistry laboratories offering only limited writing instruction and not serving as the ideal format for the preparation of a journalarticle report. Perhaps for this reason, many universities have © 2014 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Published: May 1, 2014 1643
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed400671y | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1643−1648
Journal of Chemical Education
Article
questions were graded manually by the instructor. Students were allowed to submit answers twice for each question due to many questions requiring punctilious reading of chapter material. Questions were carefully written to require students to teach themselves course content. Whereas self-teaching is not necessarily possible due to the difficulty of course content in most traditional chemistry classes, the approach seemed feasible for the writing course. Instructor feedback was given promptly after due dates. To encourage interaction outside of class, students were required most weeks to write reflective essays of their reading assignments (300 words), comment on other students’ reflective essays, write a rough or final draft of one of the article sections, and peer review at least two students’ sections. (It is recognized that peer review is one of the most important strategies to help students improve their chemistry writing skills.)4 All assignments were submitted online, resulting in a completely paperless course. Face-to-face time consisted of short lectures (highlighting salient points), discussions, library visits, and poster presentations. Approximately 30% of the face-to-face time was used to introduce library resources available for article retrieval and to allow the students to present their posters. A typical face-to-face day included a discussion of out-of-class assignments for the purpose of clarification, a brief dialogue of course structure concerns or suggestions, and group discussions. The group discussions included a series of questions regarding course content that each student could address in their groups as it specifically related to a student’s rough draft of a journal-article section. For example, when addressing the discussion section of an article, all students were required to come to class with a rough draft of their discussion section. Each student would peer review two students’ discussion sections by addressing questions such as, “How well does your partner’s draft address an expert audience?” and “Did your partner remind the reader of the results?” These questions stimulated discussion about course content addressed in reading assignments and online quizzes and also served as a springboard for a formal peer review. Discussion inevitably continued outside of class as students required more time to complete their peer reviews. Upon completion, each student submitted online their peer reviews of at least 200 words in memo format. Peer reviews were evaluated based on how well each student addressed both positive and negative aspects of employing textbook guidelines. Students completed a total of 14 formal peer reviews. Students were also required to review an additional writing topic not discussed in the course (e.g., grant proposal, curriculum vitae, cover letter, or PowerPoint presentation). A summary of the course structure is presented by the distribution of course points shown in Table 1. Without including rough drafts, students completed a total of 31 writing assignments.
majors conducting independent/faculty-led research projects, but this is not the case at Brigham Young UniversityIdaho (BYUIdaho), or at many other four-year universities. The textbook Write Like a Chemist suggests using “canned” research projects.12 Students are introduced to a research area, given data, and asked to write a paper. This very impersonal approach potentially separates the student from the project and forfeits the development of an independent idea supported by data, which is the essence of a journal article. Furthermore, because of the minimal number of “canned” projects currently available, overlap is inevitable. This option does not best model a real research paper. Others have also suggested performing at-home science projects7 or using the preparation of an edible “dish”10 as the material for teaching chemical writing. In order to teach adequately the writing of a journal article in chemistry, this work suggests employing simple kitchen chemistry projects into a chemistry-specific writing course taught by chemistry faculty. Kitchen chemistry experiments allow each student to propose a project, conduct an experiment, evaluate and interpret data, write an original paper of their work, and experience first-hand the enjoyment of scientific discovery and dissemination. Students also experience experimental design and data collection challenges and are more fully exposed to the entire research process. For many chemistry majors, this is their first and only opportunity to propose a hypothesis and experience the entire scientific process from beginning to end. Projects are chosen by the students in consultation with the instructor. These projects can easily be introduced into a traditional face-to-face or, as presented here, a more novel blended-learning course structure. It is proposed that the use of kitchen chemistry projects in chemistry writing courses is a profitable option when students are unable to conduct their own research with a faculty member for the purpose of teaching and experiencing all aspects of preparing a journal article.
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COURSE STRUCTURE The chemistry-specific writing course at Brigham Young UniversityIdaho (CHEM 391, Technical Writing in Chemical Literature) is two credits and requires the successful completion of General Chemistry II (CHEM 106) and Advanced Writing and Critical Thinking (ENG 201) before enrollment. The textbook is Write Like a Chemist.12 Course outcomes include the following: (1) the ability to search the chemical literature, (2) the completion of a chemistry experiment in the kitchen, (3) the composition of a journal article correctly employing chemistry-writing conventions, and (4) the preparation and presentation of a poster. The course was taught as a blended-learning or hybrid course.13−16 Although this course format was not required to achieve the chosen course outcomes, the novel format seemed well-suited for the course. In addition, BYUIdaho has encouraged experimentation with this and other formats. While the course was not designed to include a lab, the blended learning format resulted in manageable home projects due to reduced seat time. Learning activities were placed online in an attempt to promote self-directed learning, interaction, and flexibility. To promote self-directed learning, students were required to read one or two chapters from the textbook most weeks. Each reading assignment had an accompanying open-book online quiz of 20−30 questions offered in BrainHoney, which is a course management system of the Agilix Co. All short-answer
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KITCHEN CHEMISTRY PROJECT Before beginning the kitchen chemistry project, each student was required to prepare a project proposal explaining what was to be investigated, their hypothesis, any relevant background information, and the methods to be used for data collection. Cost was not included in the project proposals; however, student expenses were kept to a minimum (i.e.,
